Off the page
By James McConnachie
I gave a talk the other day to a class of 9-year-olds on the topic of ‘writing as a career’. They asked me the usual questions – what made you want to be a writer? how old are you? will the ‘twin prime conjecture’ ever be solved? Then one child asked me something interesting. What, he wanted to know, is the worst thing about being a writer? I thought of mentioning money, until the right answer came to me. ‘Being alone’, I said. I wonder how they’d add up, all those solitary hours and days and months of what my writer-friend Michael calls ‘tapping’. What have you been up to?’, I ask him. ‘Just tapping.’
This Winter issue of The Author shows how the writer’s life can be richly lived as soon you get off that ergonomic chair of isolation – and how words can come to life, too, once you get them off the page.
Poet Jane Commane describes how, for Coventry’s edition of the BBC’s Contains Strong Language festival, she brought poets together with ‘parks, bicycles, brass bands, twin cities, lost rivers’. One of the festival’s poets, Liz Berry, wrote about dogwalkers in a cemetery, saying, ‘a dog is a balm for loneliness / as dock is a balm for sting’. A poetry festival is a good balm, too. Theatrical writing is of course always designed to live off the page – and it’s often written in collaborative ways too. Mojisola Elufowoju of Utopia Theatre describes her ambition to take theatre a step further: off the stage and into augmented and virtual realities. Lawrence Schimel’s work recently went ‘off the page’ in an alarming way. After the Hungarian government attached his books on the grounds that they were ‘LGBT propaganda’, he found himself at the centre of a political storm. His article advises us on what can do if we find ourselves under attack. There’s more practical advice from Jonathan Pinnock, on setting up a literary podcast, and from Jonathan Ford of Writers Tax Limited on changes to the tax system that might affect writers.
This Winter issue also features three articles that I recommend if you have ever said to yourself those seven understatedly British words of existential despair: ‘sometimes I don’t know why I bother’. Mark Piggott revisits poems he wrote as a troubled young man. Dan Richards reviews two books that he calls ‘songs in the dark times, about the dark times’ – books that show how the world has ‘a great capacity for repair, for recovery, for forgiveness’.
And Roopa Farooki introduces her memoir of working as a junior doctor during the pandemic. I asked Roopa if she could find a common thread that linked her two professions. She located it in something that I think is both vitally important and drivingly motivating – in her sense of duty, as a doctor and as a writer, to the truth.
At the end of the street
I’ve written too many editorials now without mentioning Andrew Taylor’s Grub St column. It always seemed a
given. But after 18 years of witty, baleful, ironical and gorgeously scurrilous articles, in which he has swept up the funniest and most disturbingly relevant author-related news of the quarter and spun it into gold, it is, he says, ‘time to move on’. He is one of the Author’s most talented and loyal contributors, and surely our most beloved, so I am glad to be able to promise that he will be writing other articles for us. As for that last page – often the bestloved and most turned-to section of any magazine – we will be introducing a new regular feature, and two new voices, in 2022.
James McConnachie
mcconnachie.tumblr.com | @j_mcconnachie
Cover Art by Adamastor
Adamastor is a Portuguese illustration studio based in Lisbon, led by Pedro Semeano & Susana Diniz. They create illustrations for brands, products, editorial projects, and visuals for animation and motion graphics. They won the Best Children’s and Youth Book Award from the Portuguese Authors Society in 2018 and received a Special Mention in the 2020 Portuguese Illustration Awards.
In this issue
OFF THE PAGE
On duty – Roopa Farooki on why truth matters during a crisis
Poetry off the page – Jane Commane takes poetry into public spaces
Off the stage – Mojisola Elufowoju on digitally enhancing theatre
How I joined the pod people – Moving page to podcast with Jonathan Pinnock
FEATURES
More stars at my fingers than there are in the sky – Dan Richards searches for hope in books
Ask an Author: Malorie Blackman – In conversation with the novelist and scriptwriter
A little piece on paper – Adrian Bullock explores the life of paper
AUTHOR LIFE
Opening the anthology – Mark Piggott on seeing his 16-year-old self finally published
In the Eye of the Storm – Lawrence Schimel on censorship and harassment
Writers’ tax – Jonathan Ford on what to expect from new tax rules
Grub Street – A final visit, with Andrew Taylor
FROM THE SOA
Day in the life: Sophia Jackson – Meet the SoA’s Head of Events
News – 2022, Belarus, #TranslatorsOnTheCover and more
Spotlight: SoA groups and networks – Latest activities and updates
Welcome, new members
Services for authors